Arizona

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BY: Benchie Callo
Arizona State Fossil
Araucarioxylon arizonicum (Petrified wood)

Description
  • o Looks (texture) like regular wood, but may take on a darker color
  • o The petrified version of the wood will be the same size as the original piece of wood itself before it was petrified, (in other words, size varies with the tree’s age/part of tree)
  • o It is actually no longer wood but rock, it may look like wood but all of that was replaced by materials in the water that the wood absorbed over time
external image PF-46.jpgexternal image PetrifiedWoodLog.jpg
http://www.shannontech.com/ParkVision/PetForest/PetWood.html http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Arizona/fossil_petrifiedwood.html
The petrified wood on the left is seen in different colors because of the many different substances and minerals it absorbed while the other piece of wood in the right is not as colorful because it most likely absorbed many of the same minerals over the years.

Time Existed
  • o Trees have been tracked to have started being petrified as far back as 200 million years
  • o Mostly trees became petrified in warm tropical areas, or somewhere that’s close to a marsh/swamp

Preservation
  • o A tree dies and falls to the ground ( most preferably somewhere muddy)
  • o When mud covers a non-decayed part of a tree then the process starts
  • o While covered under mud the tree may take its original texture
  • o The tree would eventually start deteriorating, and while this is happening water seeps into the mud and tree
  • o The water that seeps in contains many minerals that stay in the tree and in the future makes up the petrified wood itself while the water evaporates

Who Discovered it/ How Did it Come to be the State Fossil
  • o Many people saw the wondrous petrified wood but only in 1851did an American Army officer officially announce the existence of this mineral; Lorenzo Silgreaves
  • o Petrified wood is Arizona’s state fossil because the state contains the most abundance of it within its areas, they even have a park called Petrified Forest National Park for its large abundance of the mineral

Sources